Chances are you asked your CFO for a budget to buy an Expense Management Software for faster expense reimbursements. You might also be the CFO trying to understand the ROI of using an Expense Management Software. Irrespective of who you are, it is necessary that you are aware of the costs and potential returns of such an investment. 

The returns of investment in an Expense Management Software can be categorized as tangible and intangible. 

• Tangible results include monetary benefits like savings on fraudulent expenses, savings from higher compliance with expense policies, and like. 
• Intangible results include benefits like higher employee satisfaction, higher retention rates, and better operational performance. 

In this article, we try to explore both the quantitative and qualitative benefits of using expense management software.

SUGGESTED READS:
The real benefits of using an expense reimbursement software in 2020
3 reasons why businesses needs a travel reimbursement software

Quantifying the ROI of an Expense Management Software

Most Expense Management Software charges are on the basis of active users. In the industry, active users are people who submit at least one expense report in a month. 

When calculating the quantitative ROI of an expense management software, the following are the parameters taken into account - 

• Average time spent on one expense report by employees 
• Average hourly salary 
• Average time spent on one expense report by the finance team 
• Average hourly salary of the finance team employees
• The percentage error in expense reports 

According to Oxford Economics and US travel association,

For every dollar invested in business travel, businesses generate $9.50 in revenue and $2.90 in profits. 

The same study also highlights that business travel done to meet customers or prospects generate $15-$19.99 for every dollar invested in business travel. These numbers make it even more important to manage expenses efficiently so that you can maximize the value of your buck. 

For calculating the ROI of an Expense Management Software, we consider the following data points from a GBTA study:

• Average time to complete an expense report - 20 minutes 
• The average cost of processing an expense report - $58
• Percentage of expense reports with errors - approximately 20%
• Time to correct an expense report - approximately 20 minutes
• Cost to correct an expense report - $52 

Let us suppose you have 100 expense reports a month, and you are using a manual spreadsheet-based system for expense tracking. It will cost you the following - 

• Total processing cost - 100X58 = $5800(A)
• Number of erroneous expense reports - 20(20% of all expense reports)(B)
• Cost of correcting those expense reports - 20X52 = $1040 (C)
• Total cost of managing expenses on sheet - A + C = $6840 for 100 expense reports
• This comes down to approximately $68 per expense report

Alternatively, if you are using an Expense Management Software, it costs you as little as $5 per active user per month. If we account for the hourly wages for an accountant and the number of expense reports which are processed in that period, we can calculate the total cost of using the software. 

The following data points are handy - 

• With an automated Expense Management Software, the time taken to process a report is cut by a third. For simplicity, we will assume a 50% decline in the processing time, which equals 10 minutes.
• So, in an hour, an accountant can process six expense reports or more.  
• Median hourly wages of an accountant - $29
• Since an automated solution, checks for expense policy violations, the cost of correcting the report is only the time taken to send such reports back. 
• Assuming the previous 20% of incorrect expense reports, we can say every hour accountants encounter at least one incorrect expense report. 
• Thus, five expense reports are processed every hour at the cost of $29. 
• Total cost per expense report is - 29/5 + $5 = approximately $11.

Thus the ROI on each expense report is - (68-11)/11, which is about 5x or 500% of your original investment.  

Intangible benefits of using an Expense Management Software

The numbers stand testimony for the fact that investing in expense management software is worthwhile. Especially if you have a considerable amount of business travel. 

Higher retention rates

Did you know delayed reimbursements can sometimes provoke employees to make the switch? 

70% of employees surveyed in a recent study said they would look for another employer in case they face regular delays in reimbursements. 

With a manual process, every step could have a delay leading to an overall delay in reimbursement. In contrast, with expense management software, bottlenecks can be identified at any step of the process without affecting other processes and reimbursement cycles can be reduced drastically.

Greater employee satisfaction

An employee who pays upfront for the business is an active lender to the company. More importantly, since the business doesn’t pay any interest to such borrowed money, the faster you reimburse, the better. Overall this can lead to happier employees and higher trust in the organization.

SUGGESTED READS:
2020 guide to employee expense reimbursement
Things to consider when investing in an expense software

Calculate the ROI of Fyle for your organization

Use Fyle’s free ROI calculator to understand how much Fyle can help you save in just a couple of clicks.

Investing in expense management software can transform the way your accounting operations work and improve financial productivity significantly. Ready to make the switch? Check out all of Fyle’s expense management features or schedule a demo with us to learn more!